Replicators

Join Date 05/2006

Suggestion: Drakes and other recruitable creatures

I've noticed during my playthroughs that when I manage to recruit a drake, the game becomes 2X easier. As the drake is as powerful as a mid-game full stack army, and can be used to defend a choke point, or rampage across the enemy towns.

However, lesser serpents (i forgot what they are called, they are elemental), aren't nearly as useful as the Drake, but is far more balanced.

So here is what I propose.

When one recruits a drake, It starts out as level 1. A baby drake with weak stats. 5 attack, 1 defense, 10 health (or so)

It then "feeds" upon the fallen after each battle it takes part of in the form of experience. It grows in strength(stats), as well as in size. Until it reaches a full adult of level 8-10.

Per each level of the drake, the drake consumes(maintenance) food from the nearest town. i.e. @ lvl 8, the nearest town suffers -8 food.

This not only make the drake more of an rpg/pet type creature, but also will not make it overpowered early-mid game.

As for the glowing snake things, why not have them align to whatever you have most in terms of shards? If we have 5 fireshards, have their strength be adjusted accordingly, as well as morph into the fire ones.

Finally, there are the mercenaries. Never have I seen a more useless set of troops. I mean the darklings that you recruit can steam roll over them.

I propose the ability for the player to fund the mercenary camps(give money), in order for their troop quality to improve.

Thanks

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I came to the same conclusion. I have been modding the stats, which are controlled for each level the monster has. You might want to check out my WFNB mod to see what a well balanced Serpent's Pact might look like. I don't think the devs will look at this until beta 4 really.

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Id prefer to keep it the way it is. You can only have one drake. Its fine.

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You prefer Naja to only have 12Hp and 3 armor? You want them to always be single units instead of groupable?

I just don't get you man.

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Never used Naja. Do they not come leveled up like Drakes? They should be useful from the get go.

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Mercenaries are my pride and joy. Remember those hilariously terrible ones from vanilla? No armor, crap weapons, no real use because you can't group them into parties, groups, etc.. I have made them real mercenaries. If you play with Wealthy and Master Merchant, you might have enough money to hire a party of them right away. They are midgame level chain clad units with decent swords and shields. It will cost you about 30 Gildar per soldier in the unit, but they have the stats to be worth the price. So much fun to play Capitar and just dominate with hired mercs and supreme trade routes.

There is so much potential in these kinds of units. It has yet to be fully implemented in the beta though. Of course I am sure the devs will do an even better job than I. they have the power to make new game mechanics to suit their designs.

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Quoting Lord Xia,

reply 2

Id prefer to keep it the way it is. You can only have one drake. Its fine.

Oh I contend the notion that just because you can train only one of them, it is thusly balanced.

This would be true, if it were Expensive, slow to build, slow to move, and most importantly by far, with an unlimited army size stack.

Group a drake with an army, and you'll tear through the enemy of equal army size. There is no counter for this strategy as there is no way for the enemy to overcome your group with sheer numbers, as the army size is extremely limited and fixed(except for research).

Further upsetting the balance of the issue being that the drake lairs are NOT available for everyone, and thusly making those whom captures it, god like in terms of military power. It is the equivalent of having a level 10 melee hero with the best weapon in game, at a minute cost, and can be obtained early on.

Having the drakes requiring to evolve, not only make sense in an "RPG" perspective, but also gives the enemy a fair chance to kill the sucker before it grows big. And even when it does, it would've taken significant amount of time, which by then, the enemy should have the ability to take actions against the drake. (i.e. Armor, Archery, etc)

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joasoze

Join Date 02/2006

+39

I think there might be something wrong with the sweep ability of the drakes. I believe that the text says that the sweep hits all surrounding units at 50% damage. To me it seems more like 200%.

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Want to say to replicators: Might not have to be as "violent" as your example (that starting attributes seemed very poor).

I do think the mercenaries should be more well balanced, and easier to obtain (in the fact that I rarely see the lairs, and more rarely see them near my cities, so I almost never have gotten naja, drakes or any other silly units.).

When I finally got some snakes (I think it was obsidians, or they looked like them). They had a terrible move rate over the overland manp (not in ingame mechanics, but as the visual, and waiting time for them to get anywhere in rl time... was slooow). So I never bothered to use them due to the breaking in the flow of the game (Got them from conquering some poor dude, so I allready had several stacks of superior knights).

Hope the devs hear this post, and atleast somewhat fix some of the more rubbish mercenaries.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Interesting ...

Well first, only those with "Serpent's Pact" are supposed to be able to build Dragons and Nagas from beast lairs.

Second, it does seem logical that there should be some sort of 'limitation' on when you can build the lair ... or even simply the growth and strength of the unit involved.

Once there was an idea circling around (pre WoM) about the various stages of a dragon's life. That you could recruit them/built them as an egg or youngling ... and then over the course of the game they could grow into a grand beast.

There was also talk of being able to recruit such creatures (via gold/influence/quest/tech and whatnot), as in recruit a fully adult one.

So perhaps we could combine the ideas just slightly, while incorporating the beast Lairs and the "Serpent's Pact" ability.

--> a low level tech is required to build on beast lairs ... perhaps requiring the second quest tech and something from early Civilization?

Then have such creatures also cost Influence to build.

Perhaps they could start at level 1 (a pup) and then gain experience over time until reaching their normalized level (around 7 or so).

After they reach their normalized level, they no longer get any free exp.

--> A small Naga could grow fast, and require only 20 seasons to fully mature ... while a Forest Drake could require as many as 50 seasons to fully mature.

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Quoting Lord Xia,

reply 2

Id prefer to keep it the way it is. You can only have one drake. Its fine.

You can have one drake .. per captured lair.

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I like this idea. It is like the baby dragons unit in AOW:SM when they get to Gold through exp of killing other units (3rd teir) they become a random dragon.

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Quoting seanw3,

reply 5

The level milestones for most beasties are FUBAR. Drake, Forest Drake, and generally other dragons are fine. But anything lower than that is a total waste of resources. I spent hours and hours rebalancing them to get some semblance of balance.

Mercenaries are my pride and joy. Remember those hilariously terrible ones from vanilla? No armor, crap weapons, no real use because you can't group them into parties, groups, etc.. I have made them real mercenaries. If you play with Wealthy and Master Merchant, you might have enough money to hire a party of them right away. They are midgame level chain clad units with decent swords and shields. It will cost you about 30 Gildar per soldier in the unit, but they have the stats to be worth the price. So much fun to play Capitar and just dominate with hired mercs and supreme trade routes.

There is so much potential in these kinds of units. It has yet to be fully implemented in the beta though. Of course I am sure the devs will do an even better job than I. they have the power to make new game mechanics to suit their designs.

When the real game comes out I'm going to so get some of you mods